AMD Turion 64 Clashes with Intel Centrino

AMD Turion 64 Mobile Microprocessor Reviewed

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 05/04/2005 | 09:18 PM ]

GamePC has taken a look at AMD Turion 64 MT-34 mobile microprocessor, which is AMD response to Intel Centrino mobile technology and is intended for thin and light notebooks. The chip is AMD’s fastest offering for small notebooks, it operates at 1.80GHz, integrates 1MB of L2 cache, features SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and 3DNow! technologies and has thermal design power of about 25W. Naturally, the chip sports AMD’s PowerNow! feature with C3 deeper sleep state as well as 64-bit capability, something which AMD is very proud about. But is 64-bit a thing we really need in a laptop, or an up-to-date core-logic is more important?

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“Still, the prospect of an ultra-efficient 64-bit mobile platform is tempting, and I would have a hard choice on my hand if I had to choose between a similarly configured Turion64 or Pentium-M notebook platform. One thing is clear, the Turion64 is the most immediate threat Intel has ever seen to date to its dominance of the mobile market,” GamePC believes.

“Unfortunately, quite a lot of Intel’s success has been in their bundling of the Pentium M processor with their mobile 855/915-M low power chipsets and wireless LAN controllers in their Centrino bundles. AMD has no similar bundling scheme at this time, and does not appear to have one on the horizon, which will likely make the Turion64’s move into the mainstream a bit more difficult. Perhaps AMD can team up with NVIDIA for a mobile nForce4 with integrated wireless Ethernet for a Turion 64 bundle – I know this would certainly interest me. At the time, AMD’s mobile chipsets are fairly lacking, as the most “modern” Athlon64 chipset out there is the VIA K8T800 Pro. (Several astute readers have emailed saying that the ATI Radeon XPress 200-M Mobile Chipset is now shipping, which delivers a much more modern feature set compared to other Athlon 64/Turion 64 mobile chipsets.),” GamePC writes.

“The Turion 64, for the most part, gives nearly identical performance per clock compared to AMD’s Socket-754 Athlon 64 processors. When comparing the Turion 64 to its Athlon 64 brethren, the Turion 64 doesn’t look incredibly impressive until you consider the following – the Turion 64 uses roughly one third the power of these older Athlon 64 processors, but delivers slightly better performance per clock due to AMD’s “Lancaster” architecture. What this basically means is that today’s Athlon 64 mobile platforms will be able to be fitted with Turion 64 processors and see dramatic increases in battery life while running cooler and quieter, while delivering roughly the same performance levels,” concludes GamePC.

• GamePC: Efficient 64-Bit Mobile Computing: AMD’s Turion 64 Processor.